Over the last few months I’ve finally started to setup the coffee maker my mother got me and when I bought my home nearly two years ago and buy some coffee to start making it at home before going to work. My work offers free coffee but it does have a price, Tums. I’ve been drinking coffee for more than a dozen years, never had heart burn up until drinking work’s coffee on a regular basis. While Dunkin Donuts is kind of on the way to work, paying $1.70 for a medium coffee on a daily basis adds up, so this brings me back to brewing coffee at home. After going through the coffee that Mom had bought me, I bought a tin of whatever was on sale breakfast blend. It’s not bad, really, it’s not, but I think there is better to be made out there. My boss is a coffee nazi, for real. He buys single origin green coffee beans from all around the world, roasts at home and obviously grinds and brews at home, including espresso. I’m not looking to make that much of an investment, but I am after a better cup-o-joe.

Today in my RSS reader popped up an article on one of the major blogs I read that linked to this great article, why your coffee sucks. Nothing in this article is anything I haven’t read before, but it is a good primer if you don’t know a whole lot or are intimidated by coffeegeek.com. One thing in the article that makes a lot of sense is to use bottled water, if you don’t like the water that comes out of your tap, by all means use bottled water. My experience with bottled water is that of two kinds,

  • National brands which cost a premium
  • Lesser known or store brands which are half or less the cost of the national brands

The oddity about the the generic, lesser known or store brands is that they are often bottled within a 100 mile radius of where I live and is of a public source. Chances are, it is filtered, but I should be able to do that at home for a fraction of the cost. The article does state that using something like this Brita water pitcher which costs about $13 will also work, and will be the option I’m most interested in as I’m not fond of my tap water, don’t want to make an investment in lots of bottled water and I’m trying to cut down on the amount of trash I produce, even if the bottled water bottles can be recycled.

Moving on, buying whole beans seems to be the next step in a good cup, but being a bit tight with money, I won’t be looking at buying a grinder just yet, I’m hoping to source at least two local places that do their own roasts and buy in small quantities until I can fork over the loot for a grinder.

Last is preparation. The overwhelming result from most sites I’ve read is that a standard $20 drip coffee maker was created by the devil himself, people really do seem to be this passionate about their cup of mud. One method that has always interested me, if for no other reason than by aesthetics, is the French press. LifeRemix suggests using an Aeropress, a sort of upside down French press, and I like this because it will work on any cup or mug, but it uses disposable filters, while they are dirt cheap, I’d like to avoid this both for the environment and for the cost factor, so I kept looking.

After some Googling, I found what could be the perfect answer for me, a French press travel mug. In order to keep a drink at my desk, company policy states that it must have a lid on it. Travel mugs work great because they are intended for this and I can prepare it at home and enjoy on the ride in. My personal preference is a mug with a wide base on it. Sadly, my car doesn’t have any cup holders so the mugs with thin bases meant to fit in a car’s limited cup holder is of no real value to me, the wider base is stable enough I can put on the passenger side floor and when at work, is the least likely to get tipped over. Working with computers for 8+ hours a day, this is important. A company called Planetary Design offers unbreakable French press travel mugs and has a wide based model! Giddy, I go on to read the details about it, figuring that this is everything I’m looking for. I’m instantly sold. Fuck! There is a big Buy Now button but below that is a This item is temporarily discontinued, you’ve got to be kidding me! My next step is to send them an email and ask that they add me to a list to be notified when this product will be available again, if at all. I wrote the email three days ago, no response as of yet. My next step, since I was really sold on the company, sans the lack of customer service, is to find a retailer who has one in stock. First place I look, Amazon, I find it, and it’s in stock! For those of you interested, you can buy it here, at $18 with free shipping, it’s not only cheaper than the Aeropress, it uses a stainless filter, no need to purchase paper filters.

The mug is made of double-walled stainless steel and ever part of the press inside can be bought should anything ever fail, straight from Planetary Design in a $5 kit. Aside from that, this mug should live through just about anything and give years of performance. That said, they offer them in a variety of colors. My first choice for everything is black, which they offer, but I was leery of doing so because I can’t find any information anywhere that indicates how the color is applied. I’ve seen stainless mugs with logos on them fade after only a few trips through a dishwasher or scratch off when carrying a mug and a set of keys in the same hand. This could make the mug look like crap really fast. I was half tempted to order the one called wasabi, simply because it was the most annoying color I’ve ever seen, but I’m sticking with the chrome finish, although I’d hardly call it chrome. The pictures just seem to be that of a standard stainless mug with black handle.

My intention is go make a trip to two local coffee houses that roast and get small half or, if available, quarter pound ground coffee from them and find one that I like. The downside to all of this effort to get a better cup of coffee is that it will require more time in the morning preparing, which contradicts my 10 tips to starting your day right. Once the mug arrives and I acquire some decent coffee, I’ll have to boil water in a teapot every morning to make the coffee. I don’t foresee this taking up a lot of extra time, I may be able to incorporate the boiling into my morning routine, if it costs me two extra minutes of time for a better, less heart-burning cup of coffee, I think it will be worth it.

Update: I’ve just placed my order and they only had the wasabi color in stock, and only 4 of them. Minus the one I just bought, I’m going to assume that only 3 of this style remain. If you are interested in this type of mug, I’d grab it sooner than later.

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